


Peace

by moonhoney



Category: Far Cry 5, Far Cry: New Dawn
Genre: Gen, Written before the Release of New Dawn, john seed's musings and angst, nothing graphic but it's obvious what's being talked about, self harm allusions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-07
Updated: 2019-02-07
Packaged: 2019-10-24 02:31:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17695946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonhoney/pseuds/moonhoney
Summary: John Seed wanders over to the borders of Prosperity.





	Peace

**Author's Note:**

> this is basically just a bit of rambling over John Seed if he survived. it’s entirely conjecture based on very little, and probably won’t be relevant once fcnd comes out, but i felt like writing it anyway. it might suck but you don't get better without sucking first!
> 
> please heed the tags!

  Joseph wouldn’t, in all likelihood, approve of what he was doing. 

  There was an aborted attempt at a snort there— _of course_  he wouldn’t. Joseph didn’t like to prick old wounds anymore (he hadn't retraced his sins in  _years_ ), and as John absently thumbed over the whitened  _sloth_  sheltering his heartbeat, he was satisfied enough his hands would calmly keep to himself. Satisfying himself, satisfying Joseph. 

  It was easy enough for John to tell himself that when Joseph wasn't there to refute him. 

  He snorted at that. 

  Truthfully, there  _was_  little point in wandering as close as he did to Prosperity except to satisfy that age-old desire to pick and poke, to tear at himself, to take that bloody hand and dig those broken nails into wherever purchase could be found—it was a call whose initial trumpet had sounded decades ago, the echoes still ringing clear in his ear—and though his craving wanted and  _wanted,_ the thought of letting such a taste onto his tongue made him recoil now. The desire to do and not to do weren't consistent in their equality, only in their permanence, these bottomless creatures of the inky void that drank their water with stomachs like sieves, their lifeblood in every breath he took and every one he ever would. It was simply impossible to fill his wrath to satisfaction when there was always something to be destroyed, whether others or himself, and so he would always wish for a peace that would never arrive; he might feel guiltier over it, but such an instinct was gently curtailed to the wayside knowing he could let his sin grow  _vicious_ , and at least, did not.

  And  _oh_ , how easily he could let himself get swept away by those torrents if let his feet slip from the shoreline. It only took a second's survey of Prosperity, a flash of an imprint behind his eyes, and what was  _now_  and what he  _knew_  were like night and day. 

  What he saw standing erect before him was a tombstone with an open grave awaiting it's fill; it was a carcass, a mutilated corpse, flies flitting throughout the festering remains. 

  It was another opportunity for grace, to grant forgiveness for thievery whose stolen contents he didn’t even have a use for anymore.

   _Let them be_ , he heard a phantom whisper, the sound a strange mingling of Joseph’s voice and his own,  _you can forgive them; they were not the ones that transgressed upon you._

  John dug his nails into his palms, deep, burning, spilling just a little, and then flicked his fingers outwards. He repeated the motion for a little while, until his breathing was enough to calm him—this was not vicious. Not even  _close_.

  In any case, he knew he could ignore it, and had done so for years; let his mercy reign and leave it to lie as it had fallen. It wasn’t  _forgiveness_ , though. It was all fragmented, broken, incomplete, and the leftover pieces wounded him to leave them there, wounding whenever he tried to pluck them out. He wanted to let it be, and  _wanted_  to set himself free of it and endure—indulge in—all that would entail.

  He’d  _wanted_  the peace that was promised to him when the New Eden dawned after their seven years in murky suspension; he’d  _wanted_  the shining new world to envelop him entirely, smothering and inescapable and so complete it buried into the core of him and changed him from the inside out. Instead he’d had to claw wickedly inside himself with only his lonely hands for strength, to reach that tiny, tiny thing, and nurture it always with exhausted, trembling, excruciating patience. That was the soil and the earth of the New Eden. It was almost unforgivable—almost had been—but soaked in Joseph's tears, the bulk of John's anger over broken promises had evaporated to Heaven long ago, and he was content to let someone else carry that burden.

   _Let them carry it now_ , his whispers helpfully offered again, settling thick in his head like smoke,  _why not?_   _Surely it is a lighter weight to free yourself of?_

  And  _why not?_  He didn't want to forgive this, and he didn't know why. 

  John moved his hand under his pullover and lightly scratched over  _sloth_  through the thin material of his button-up, softly tracing the letters from 'H' to 'S'. Forgiving Joseph—that had been the highest mountain he'd climbed. For being left with his same old walls, the same old roof, his barred windows and locked door when Joseph promised a key.  _What forgiveness came before that?_  His tongue clicked at the roof of his mouth. 

  The Deputy.

  It was such an old memory he felt almost lost trying to recall it in its accuracy, like searching through a dream-like mist for a figure lingering on the bleeding edges, just out of reach, a form of clarity and opacity. It was the watery, old feelings that left the brightest imprints in his archives—not the blood in his lungs or his broken fingers, nor his cracked rib or the hot pressure where he'd been shot—but that feeling of dim, comforting hope that fluttered through him after he'd laid his offering of mercy for the Deputy (comforting in a way that he suspected now went beyond them), pure in intent and pulled from the deep, cracked well where the shallow, placid pool of his love lay. Let God accept them for all their transgressions, past, present and future. He'd meant it, and there is some warm comfort now in his chest as he remembers lying on the ground as he had, left in an open field, the unknowable breadth of the sky simultaneously overwhelming and soothing his shaky breaths. He'd felt so small and insignificant; all of him was so insignificant, and how delightful was that? As the Deputy lumbered away, he would've been content to fall on that peak—

  —but his body was nothing if not a resilient thing. 

 _You have shown you are capable,_ Joseph had murmured, quietly joyous, standing at his bedside where he lay; Joseph's hand smoothed through his crumpled hair, familiar and strengthening the tether to his mortality,  _and God has given you an opportunity to spread that love, John. Oh John, I knew you could._

  His gut lurched then.  _Hadn’t I shown them love?_ Purification, salvation, a safeguard from insanity; isn't that what he'd been doing? He hadn't the energy to scowl then, but it slipped easily onto his face now. It had felt so truly like love he hadn't found any other word for it since then. But what did it matter? His efforts were for naught; unnecessary, and that was what hurt the most.

   _Everyone here is clearly sane,_  he thinks spitefully, earnestly, and the weight of it deflates him.

  They scurried about the place like rats, but they were all intact. He recognised the  _familiar_  ones almost instantly. The ones he'd given the opportunity to live their lives free, the ones he'd scrubbed hard at to wash it all away, the ones who saw the tide come rushing back in and let the rolling waves carry them back out to sea. It didn't matter now, none of that mattered now.  _L_ _et it lie, let it lay there._  His fingernails dug into the flesh of his chest;  _forgive, forget, move on and be at peace in the garden. This is what we must do now, John._

  Sloth itched under the whorls of his fingertips as they carved moon crescents into the space around them. His arms and chest prickled with pressure, every tattoo bubbling beneath the surface. He looked over Prosperity once again.

  "Let it die already," die or be something else entirely. There was nothing to do with all of this except to watch it rot or rage against it. He couldn't do the latter; didn't want to do the former, and only by the hand of an overwhelming adversity (a storm, a fire,  _something—_ perhaps there was a leftover missile from the Malmstrom Base that might randomly eject and 'just so happen' to hit exactly here) could reduce it to satisfying ash. Just— _anything_  to bury it.

  A deep, perturbed sigh erupted from his chest. He took his hand out from underneath his pullover and wiped it over his face, punctuating the minuscule cleansing with a smack to his cheek. That was enough for today. 

  He returned down the path he came, the stench of the neon flowers bristling through his nostrils, sickly sweet, like gliding through a field of thorns. He'd never gotten used to such a thick smell, too much like the Bliss and he'd never liked that anyway. Just another thing to endure. After navigating through the heavy underbrush for a few minutes, he came across the ramshackle jeep he'd taken to travel here.

  "You took a little while," Jacob grumbled from the driver's seat, eyes remaining on the pistol he was fiddling with, "thought I might have to come get ya."

  John scoffed, the sound soft at the edges, "You would've liked that wouldn't you?"

  "Need more than a pistol and a rifle to like it."

  John climbed into the passenger seat, closing his eyes to the familiar rumble of the engine struggling to turn over and Jacob's annoyed grunting, the burning colours of Prosperity fading in his mind's eye to dullness and brass. He could, at least, put it away. That was the part Joseph worried about, and perhaps he might always worry over it; these bones left to the earth and no-one had a shovel. It was something that had to be suffered with only brutal methods to cut it out, far too ferocious for Joseph to stand behind now and beyond anything John could conceive. Perhaps all he would do, from every day to the next, was watch its presence like a stormcloud in the distance; this looming snarl that mocked him and deserved to be put down. Some things could only be endured.

  And by God, to live in the face of such a thing, well, that was courage, wasn't it?

**Author's Note:**

> i honestly didn't know whether to include jacob having driven them there because actually having fuel 17 years after a nuclear apocalypse is??? like?? no???? but then i remembered a pre-order item was a vehicle so like,, i'm guessing they're gonna justify that somehow. maybe everything will run on grass or something.


End file.
